It was a couple of days after my twenty-first birthday, and I was still in a celebratory mood. My friend Jiminez from Arizona stopped me on my way to the mess hall and invited me to an off-post bar in downtown Saigon where he knew the owner. I stopped at the PX on the way to the military bus stop and bought some munchies. The drop-off point in Saigon was only a couple of blocks from the bar Jiminez frequented. We walked in and picked a table in the far back corner where we could observe the front door. It was refreshingly cool from the hot and humid outside weather, but the bar had a musty odor. The whole bar smelled of stale beer and the persistent smell of cigarettes. Smoke hung over our heads like a cloud and moved about with the oscillating fan. I was trying to convince Jiminez into finding another place to go when a tiny lady came to our table.

"What you want drink?" she asked.

Jiminez ordered Ba Mui Ba¹ for both of us then asked tiny lady "Where's my owner friend?"

"Mamasan she not here.  She come soon."

We were on our second beer and enjoying 60's music when Jiminez pointed to the door.  Mamasan was at the front door scanning the room while holding to her lips an unlit cigarette in its holder. She noticed Jiminez and leisurely walked over to our table with exaggerated drama. Mamasan was an older short lady with jet black shortened hair, heavy makeup and a strong powerful voice that cut through the 60's music pumped into powerful speakers placed around the bar.  Jiminez lied to the lady owner that it was my birthday and while still standing she tried to sing a Vietnamese version of “Happy Birthday” to me then planted a big kiss on my cheek wishing me a happy birthday.  Jiminez feigned jealousy, and bar owner lady grabbed Jiminez in a bear hug telling him “Don’t worry, honey.  I have something special for you and your birthday friend.”  She went into some back room and came out with a couple of rolled joints for each of us.  “You no smoke here,” she said.  “Smoke later.”

A few minutes later, she returned to our table and ‘gifted’ me a small bottle of rice wine.  “I gift to you my birthday friend,” she said. I was not able to drink the rice wine which is something like twenty to twenty-five percent alcohol. She kept checking to find my bottle almost untouched. I then began mixing it with my Ba Mui Ba¹.  It made the bar with its nasty smells more tolerable.  Jiminez stashed the nearly empty bottle of rice wine in his side pocket. We left the bar close to curfew.  Jiminez would not let me pay telling me it was my birthday.  I paid for the taxi ride back to our main gate. 

That next morning my head throbbed with a persistent color of hurt brought on by the potent smokes, a sleepless and hard night of rice wine and cheap local beer.  Classified document storage required triple lock security, and our classified cage doubled the requirement by adding three high-security combination locks to the exterior cage door.  The third lock perhaps only a foot from the floor had always been temperamental and uncooperative.  I had requisitioned new locks, but high-security locks were scarce.  I pounded the Series 200 lock with the heel of my boot sending a sharp, exploding hurt to the soul of my brain.  I grabbed a heavy-duty metal stapler from a nearby desk and pounded the lock several times before I again dialed the combination.  Brute force is a powerful agent.

I was still searching for a cup to run next door for a much-needed cup of black coffee when I heard the front door slam shut and spotted Major Facini, a large boisterous Italian with a well-known reputation as a bully and intimidator. He was mumbling incoherently as he approached my cage window asking for the classified document he had requisitioned the day before.

“Specialist!” he roared out at me. “Where IS my goddamn document? I’ve got all these damn alligators biting at my ass, and you’re not helping me here! I need my goddamn document!"

I grudgingly pulled the document from the classified safe, threw it on the customer window ledge and began inventorying it as Major Facini switched personalities and began distracting me with a barrage of extraneous questions, comments and mindless Italian jokes. I was intent and fully focused on inventorying the document pages. Major Facini stopped suddenly for a few seconds. I looked up to him saying, “You’re not even listening to me, are you?”

“Only a couple of more minutes, Major. Then I can laugh at all your jokes,” I promised.

The major waited patiently fidgeting but without another word. Once I completed the page inventory and prepared the transfer documents for his signature, he became his talkative self once more. Major Facini kept a sign on his desk: “When the meek inherit the earth, what’s gonna become of us tigers?”

“So what great and wonderful things are you gonna do for your country today in this great and wonderful foreign land?” he asked.

“I was up all night with yet another birthday celebration, and I’m working all day today. I have staff duty tonight, and I have classified burn detail tomorrow,” I said. “Of course, I’ll be working all day tomorrow, too. Life’s just not fair, so I have no time to do greatness for my country – not today, anyway.”

With the classified document under his arm, he sort of strutted away then looked over his shoulder to say, “Well, seems to me you should get the day off, and belated birthday wishes to you, Specialist.”

About mid-afternoon that day, Major Facini returned with a belated birthday present. He again wished me a happy birthday then left while I was cautiously opening up the box not really knowing what to expect.

Despite his reputation as a bully, Major Facini was not the typical stuck-up officer. He treated everyone equally bad from the lowest private on up. He had served his four years as a US Army Signal officer then left the military and had gone back to Connecticut working for Bell Telephone Company. When the Vietnam build-up began, Captain Facini was quickly recalled back to active duty and sent to Vietnam. After about two weeks in-country, he was promoted to Major. Earlier I had read in the Army Times about him and three other captains suing the US Army over their recall to active duty. All four officers were in our Signal Section. The Army Times had a small article naming names and how their suit had been decided against them. From that day forward, Major Facini assumed a laid-back, anti-establishment attitude. As an additional duty, he was our supply officer and had access to the wickedly corrupt and undependable supply chain.

We needed a Xerox copier. Sergeant Major Verser tried desperately for weeks to secure it through the unreliable supply system. That failing, he arranged for me to pick up a jeep with a small trailer and drive Major Facini to the port of Saigon where Major Facini asked for the senior sergeant in charge and talked or bullied the sergeant into diverting to us a brand new Xerox copier already tagged and crated for the 1st Cavalry Division in the central highlands of Vietnam. Major Facini, a specialist driving the forklift and I manhandled the crate onto the trailer. Once loaded, Major Facini thanked and shook the forklift driver’s hand then turned to me. “Get in the jeep quick and let’s get out of here!” he yelled. Approaching the exit gate at the Saigon port, the MP guard asked for signed documents we needed to remove the copier from the facility. We had none. Major Facini went into his bully mode talking circles around the MP who seemed sufficiently confused to raise the gate barrier halfway before dropping it back down. “I’m sorry, major,” he said, “but I have to get approval from my commander before I can release your cargo.” Major Facini got out of the jeep and towered over the MP.

“Son, you go call your goddamn commander, and make sure he understands that I have here a VOCG² directive to get this damn cargo to a C-130³ waiting at the airfield AS WE SPEAK to transport it to the 1st Cavalry Division command staff.  Since your people could not get this goddamn cargo to An Khe in time, they sent ME to get it there, and I have only thirty minutes left to get this damn cargo to the airfield.  You’re making a career decision for both you and your commander, sergeant, so raise that goddamn barrier!” The major's lie worked. Without another word, the MP sergeant meekly went back to his post, raised the exit barrier and saluted him.

The Xerox copier had been a challenge from Sergeant Major Verser who told him, “Any major worth his salt would find me a Xerox copier. I don’t care how you do it, who you bribe or whose ass you need to kiss, major. Just get me my goddamn copier. Go out there and make it happen, SIR!” Major Facini was a good person to know.

Major Facini’s birthday present turned out to be a boxful of office supplies containing dozens of pens, pencils, scotch tape, pencil sharpeners, staplers and an assortment of other hard-to-find office supplies. It even contained three or four Series-200 high-security locks which were nearly impossible to get even with highest authority signatures. I had several high-security file cabinets that I had not been able to use because I had been unable to get these Series-200 locks.

Some days later I received another belated birthday gift. It was from my brother Ray. I don’t recall if it was a wallet with a single crisp US greenback or just a birthday card with the dollar bill inside. In either case, it was a real greenback. Since greenbacks in the hands of US military were very much verboten in a futile attempt to curb black market activity, this one-dollar bill was a novelty and keepsake. Ray mentioned in his short note that he was sending it to remind me of what a US greenback dollar looked like. There was no way to spend it in Vietnam, so I saved it to make my first purchase with it upon returning back to the “land of the big PX” or to use it for some unplanned predicament since my predicaments were then happening with more and more frequency.

My birthday Dollar never made it back to the world. Several days later Garcia and I were drinking in downtown Saigon. It was close to curfew, so we were looking for a taxi to take us back to Tent City B in Tan Son Nhut. I had stashed several MPC⁴ and Vietnamese Piastre⁵ in my pockets saving it for a taxi. I checked all my pockets and found no money at all. I always carried my wallet in my breast pocket, and there was no currency there at all except for my crisp new US Dollar bill. I asked Garcia if he had any money, and he wasted no time getting into a panic saying, “Man, I spent all my money buying the last rounds because you said you had enough money for a taxi. I don’t have enough left for a taxi! Goddamn, Tony! Why you go and do this shit?”

I suggested we flag down an Army military policeman and ask him for a ride back to Tan Son Nhut. “Man, you’re crazy!” Garcia yelled. “We’ll wind up at the MP station and get charged with breaking curfew! Naw, I’m not gonna do that. Let’s just start walking.” We started walking.

A light drizzle began to take form, and it would’ve been probably a two-hour walk back to Tan Son Nhut provided we didn’t get spotted by MPs first. I flagged down a taxi with Garcia yelling out at me, “Now how you gonna pay that man? You got no money!”

I asked him to take us to Tan Son Nhut and offered him my watch. It was a cheap watch. He declined. I took out my wallet and pulled out Ray’s crisp dollar bill. I offered it to him telling him, “This is American money. This is big money. I give you American money. You take us Tan Son Nhut. No problem, okay?”

He took the dollar bill, examined it in the dim taxi light, and to our surprise, he said, “Ok. I take you. No problem.”

Major problem. We got to the main gate at Tent City B after curfew. There were two MPs at the gate who would write up anyone returning after curfew. No other options available, so I instructed Garcia to give a false unit of assignment.

“Man, I’m not gonna do that shit! We’re already in trouble for breaking curfew. Then they’re gonna get us for lying to the MPs,” said Garcia.

“Dammit, just do it!” I yelled back at Garcia.

We walked up to the MP guard shack, and I asked the MP sergeant, “Look, sergeant, just could not find a taxi in time. Can we just get through without getting written up?”

“What were you doing out this late?” the MP asked.

“We were just celebrating our promotion to Sp4, and we’re gonna lose it if we get written up,” I lied.

“Let me see your ID cards,” the MP said.

He took our ID cards and entered our information on his log then asked for our unit of assignment. On the other side of the rusted, triple-row barbed wire fence encircling the perimeter was a well-lit unit sign of the tenant transportation company. On many occasions going through the gate, I had walked past that sign, and it had always been a marvel of curiosity to me how this once-proud now faded sign with all its paint peeling at the edges could have become so neglected and overgrown with wild weeds.

“We’re in that transportation company right there,” I lied pointing to the well-lit sign. Writing our adopted unit into his log, the MP said, “That must be one big company. Quite a few of your folks breaking curfew.” He entered our adopted unit of assignment on his log, handed us back our ID cards and let us go through the gate.

Garcia lived in fear for the next few weeks thinking we would be discovered and be severely punished. Computers and their relational databases had not yet come of age back then.

This episode in my life took place in October 1966. Brother Ray never learned how his crisp US greenback birthday dollar played a key role in my life at a time when I was in desperate need of it. Perhaps he would never see the humor of it – that of helping me out of yet another marvelous situation from which I cleverly extricated myself thanks to his birthday dollar. It has been some fifty-plus years later, and each passing year makes me increasingly more appreciative of Ray's contribution to my war effort.

Local 33 Beer (Ba Muoi Ba)

C-130 Hercules at airfield

$10 Vietnam-era MPC

¹  Ba Muoi Ba beer “33” was a low-quality beer in Vietnam. It came in a large thick brown glass bottles and was popular in Vietnam primarily because it was cheap and available.
²  Verbal Order of Commanding General, an order verbally issued but not necessarily documented.
³  C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport used extensively in Vietnam.
⁴  Military Payment Certificate –The only US currency allowed in Vietnam. American dollars were never authorized and all payments were made in MPC.
⁵  Vietnamese currency

. . . On An Appropriate and Well-Timed Gift

"The excellence of a gift lies not in its monetary value but in its timing and appropriateness. - Charles Dudley Warner, American Journalist

"Twenty-one being an important age goes back to medieval times. A boy could become a page at age 7, a squire at age 14 and a knight at 21 years of age." - Birthday Butler